Spyware Infection Happens To The Best Of Us

In my last post, I reported that malware infections are at an all time high. Spyware infections make up a large portion of these infections and even computer savvy individuals are becoming victims. I believe that the increase in spyware infections is due in large part to computer users not having anti-spyware software on their system; many computer users mistakenly think that having anti-virus software is enough. The anti-virus software only assumption is dangerous as discussed here.

Henry, a good friend and fellow computer specialist, recently became the victim of spyware due to not having anti-spyware software installed on his Windows XP desktop computer. He had aVast! anti-virus software and Zone Alarms firewall running on his system. Henry just got a new LCD monitor and was searching for desktop wallpaper online. After visiting several wallpaper websites and downloading some wallpaper, he called me up when his Zone Alarm firewall reported that a program was trying to access the Internet. He asked for my opinion because he could not find any Google results on the program that was trying to access the Internet; the program name consisted of nine digits. I told him to run an anti-virus scan on his entire system and then an anti-spyware scan. He agreed to the virus scan, but didn’t think a spyware scan was necessary. His reasoning, which I hear often was:

The anti-virus scan will detect any threat on my computer. Spyware needs a virus to install so if I detect the virus and remove it, the spyware will not be able to install itself.

In response, I told him that I highly recommend he do spyware scan immediately after his virus scan. He finally agreed and told me he will later that night. The next morning, I got a frantic call from him saying that his computer was compromised; he could not access open any program files, his Internet browser was hijacked, his anti-virus software was disabled along with his firewall, and a fake anti-spyware program called System Security had installed. In addition, his wallpaper was changed and displayed the following message:

WARNING!
YOUR’RE IN DANGER!
YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH SPYWARE!

ALL YOU DO WITH COMPUTER IS STORED FOREVER IN YOUR HARD DISK.
WHEN YOU VISIT SITES, SEND E-MAILS… ALL YOUR ACTIONS ARE LOGGED. AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE THEM WITH STANDART TOOLS. YOUR DATA IS STILL AVAILABLE FOR FORENSICS. AND IN SOME CASES

FOR YOUR BOSS, YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR WIFE, YOUR CHILDREN.
Every site you or somebody or even something, like spyware, opened in your browsers, with all images, and all downloaded and maybe later removed movies or mp3 songs -
ARE STILL THERE and could break your life!

SECURE YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!
REMOVE ALL SPYWARE FROM YOUR PC!

I asked him whether or not he ran the spyware scan. He said he didnt but planned to this morning after turning on his computer. Too late, once he rebooted, the spyware program got the chance to install itself and turn off his anti-virus software and firewall.

The first thing I told him to do was to unplug his computer from his network so that the spyware infection and any other virus infections his computer may now have would not infect his other systems. Then, I asked him to bring up the Windows task manager. However, once the task manager came up the spyware program would immediately shut it down. As a result, I asked him to boot into safe-mode and to download my recommended spyware remover onto a writable CD or flash drive from another computer. In safe-mode, the spyware program cannot run itself and therefore he could install the spyware remover. He ran the spyware scan and it successfully detected and removed System Security, Tojan Vundo.H, Trojan Vundo, and a backdoor bot. In addition, the spyware remover repaired the registry settings that were changed by the spyware infection which disabled Windows Security Center.

Henry learned first hand that an anti-spyware program is required in today’s Internet. In addition, he is more careful on the websites that he visits and has upgraded his Internet Explorer browser to the latest version. You can learn more about preventing spyware in this article: Spyware Blockers – Essential Tools For Keeping Your PC Safe.